I Was Too Fat For Sex

- Frances Leate and Kelly Strange

Wrapping my dressing gown round my pyjamas, I switched off the light and got into bed. My husband, Alistair, reached across and put his hand on my hip. ‘Not tonight, darling,’ I said, my voice muffled under the duvet.

It was September 2014 and the very last thing I felt like doing was having sex with my husband.

As Alistair rolled over with a sigh, our double bed seemed to buckle under our combined weight of 40st. Then, after an awkward silence, he started to snore loudly, while I lay there in the dark, eyes blurred with tears. This had been going on for a year now.

I’d never exactly been slim – I’d been nicknamed Titanic at school – but when Alistair and I had met in April 2007 through online dating, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And on our honeymoon in St Lucia in March 2010, we were like a couple of teenagers.

Only thanks to our love of Chinese takeaways and box sets, we’d both been piling on the pounds.

By the time our daughter, Sophie, was born in April 2014, I hated Alistair seeing me naked. At 5ft 8in, 18st and a size 24, I loathed my body. It didn’t matter that Alistair was big, too – he seemed to carry it better.

Holiday heartbreak

And so, night after night I rejected his advances.

‘I feel disgusting,’ I explained to Alistair the next morning. He looked heartbroken.

‘Are you still in love with me?’ he asked.